Bleachers @ House of Blues

Bleachersfeaturing Amy Shark and Bishop Briggs

November 17, 2017 @ House of Blues Boston

I arrived at the House of Blues around 3:30pm, only to find a handful of people waiting. The cold was deterring people from lining up early for the sold out show. To my benefit, when the doors did open, I was able to make it very close to the stage.

Bleacher’s first opener was Amy Shark, an Australian singer who is just emerging in the States. You might recognize her song ‘Adore’ from the new Apple Music commercials. Her down-to-earth, indie vibe was a perfect way to get the show started, as the crowd was engaged, and her small band delivered a powerful sound. Something I noticed between all three bands was that they were all very engaged with the crowd, stopping to get the crowd excited and share anecdotes about the songs they were going to perform. It wasn’t overkill, and was nice to see, especially when so many bands will play through a set without acknowledging who they are playing to.

Next up was Bishop Briggs, whose performance raised the level of excitement and energy of the crowd. She spent her set dancing and bouncing around the stage, all whilst delivering a mind blowing vocal performance. At one point, she started running back and forth across the stage like she was participating in one of those beep pacer tests from middle school gym class. Her music was more electronic and hip-hop inspired in comparison to Amy Shark.

Bleachers’ set began at 10:00pm with ‘Dream of Mickey Mantle,’ and the excited crowd was met by an even more excited band. Jack Antonoff came out dressed in the costume seen on the cover of Gone Now. He promptly left the stage after the song, coming back after changing into a black muscle tank, black jeans, Doc Martens, and a yellow baseball cap for his set. The stage’s backdrop featured a red moon and stars, and the amount of equipment and instruments present seemed to overcrowd the limited space on stage, yet Jack still had plenty of room to move around. The set was so powerful that the venue as a whole seemed like it was bursting at the seams trying to contain Bleachers and the energetic crowd. Drummer Mikey Riddleberger celebrated a birthday during this tour, and so the crew brought out a cake, and Jack prompted the crowd to sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ After blowing out the candles, the cake was passed into the crowd at the front of the stage.

While the set featured the best of Bleachers, a throwback to one of Jack’s older projects fun. was included into the set as he played a stripped down version of ‘Carry On.’ Jack interrupted his set multiple times to engage with the audience, mostly to talk about how great the crowd was. He talked about his connections with Boston and how it was the best show so far on this tour. Jack introduced the band with extensive solos from each member before the encore, and they closed the show with hits ‘I Wanna Get Better’ and ‘Don’t Take the Money.’